The weird thing is it apparently happened during the game but off the court.

Part of the BA statement:

The Australian Olympic Team has announced that that Triple Olympian Aron Baynes has been ruled out for the remainder of the Boomers Olympic competition due to a neck injury.

Baynes sustained the injury during the game against Italy on Wednesday night at Saitama Super Arena which saw him monitored in a local hospital.

Baynes underwent a series of tests and is expected to recover in the coming weeks, but not in time to continue to play in this Olympic competition.

"I am really disappointed that I can't continue in the Olympics," said Baynes. “I along with the rest of the team have been working so hard in our quest for an historic Olympic medal and I am gutted that I can’t complete the journey with the boys’, but I have every confidence that they will get the job done”.

Olgun's updated to say this should've said "on" the court.

There goes the medal ... but I want to be wrong

Crap - are we allowed to call up another to fill in for him?

Would BA have vaccinated the injury replacements just in case?

Isn't Bogut over there commentating at the moment?
Would make a nice comeback story!!!

Channel 7 just said that he slipped in the change rooms

I am always going to try to find hope when it comes to the Boomers. This is a pretty big blow but if we look at our games so far, we beat USA mostly without him. We beat Italy without him in the second quarter. Reath can do a lot of the things Baynes can do to some extent. The problem is we just don't really have a 'big' line up we can go to. We have to stay mobile. Can we medal that way? Possibly. Argentina got silver at the world cup with no real imposing big center. But this is a blow. I don't really want to treat the campaign like it's over already so I'll only be interested in hearing about solutions and not catastophrizations. But yes, it's a blow. It doesn't make things easier.

Shattered

Talk about freakish injury - From The Australian:

Dr. David Hughes confirmed Baynes suffered an injury on-court against Italy, before slipping in the bathroom in a freak accident that has seen his Games campaign come to an end.

"It was a complicated series of events," Hughes told reporters. “He did suffer an injury during the match on the court, and then he had a slip in the bathroom and suffered further injury.

“It became apparent to the medical staff that this was a bit more serious than just an average injury.”

Baynes was taken to hospital, where he has undergone further testing.

I'm surprised they've ruled him out totally for the remainder of the games. Understand it's probably severe but is the reasoning for that to clear the roster spot so they can bring another in?

Otherwise they could just be saying it's a "day-by-day" progress so their opponents could be left in the dark (let them train/plan around a Baynes on the court scenario)

It sucks but it seems fate just didnt want Baynes there. There was the knee injury, two freak injuries in a row. This Olympic campaign was meant to be without Baynes it seems. Very sad. Huge fan. I wish him full, speedy recovery. He's been a huge part of what we do.

But having said that, we played a lot of games without much influence from Baynes. We don't 'really' become that much smaller because Reath is a similar size.

I actually agree with Karl Beston's recent tweet that Australia's front line will hold down the fort against everyone, except France and Spain. Those will be the real test.

Let's look at Spain - a 41 year old Gasol and an overweight Gasol. They're not the same players they were in 2016 or 2019. Could an agile and athletic group of Reath, Landale and Kay negate their influence?

Well.. they actually didn't really dominate inside against Japan nor Argentina. I am not blithely saying "yay, we'll be fine". But in their ages and conditions we might be slightly exaggerating their potential influence.

France. Gobert. A problem. We need to be aggressive in denying the point guards ways to get him the ball.

Slovenia - Argentina - our likely crossovers, don't really have noteable big men.

I don't think Reath has to be 'that good' because for most of the games we've played, Baynes has either not been 'that good' or he's been injured. He had one good game.

Can Reath trouble shots inside, get boards, and be 'big'? He can do that much. If he can hold the fort down for 15 minutes he's doing what we need him to do.

But yes, probably isn't the world's greatest sign for Reath that Goorj hasn't chosen to go with him too much. But I think Goorjian just likes the small-ball line ups. This is partly why I think we may survive losing Baynes in this situation.

Big test tomorrow against Germany - the biggest team in the competition.

Reath right now is as good as Baynes

"Reath right now is as good as Baynes"

What are you basing that on? Or is it a quip because baynes 'right now' is injured?

This is why they should've left Sobey or Green out and added Cooks, Motum or Creek. Now relying heavily on Landale, Kay and Reath to all play big minutes every game OR relying on smallball with Ingles or Thybulle at the 4.

Watched Spain vs Argentina last night. Pau Gasol is 41 but he's still 7 foot 1 and very handy. Marc Gasol is about 20kgs bigger than Landale or Reath. Hernangomez is 6'10 and handy around the hoop.

However, Argentina don't have any true bigs at all. Scola, Delia, none of them overly powerful. Argentina relies on pressure and run.

France obviously has Gobert. USA are full of long wing players but not much real size.

Much will depend on the luck of the lottery and who our opponents are. I haven't seen much of Germany but obviously they're first up.

I guess Kay will start now and that will give us that high post that works well with what we do.
Reath to the eye test is agile,shoots well,always in good position and can get boards.
We will miss Bangers authority in the middle but we were always going to struggle inside against Spain and France.
Maybe we can be USA light lol

I think Australia's best bet is to play like Argentina, just with more talent. We actually are bigger than Argentina still. But also when it comes to the Gasols, they hardly dominated against Japan either.

Small ball is the way to go now. If the bigs can keep hitting from the outside then it will help immensely.

I imagine they would already have a game plan up their sleeve to counter Gobert's defensive presence at the rim.

Guarding him on the pick and roll and boxing everyone's bigs will be critical.

edit: boxing out everyone's bigs

Germany are huge so saturday night is as bis as it gets now. If only Bogut had his body right!

When it comes to the other teams size, we only ever were using 3 bigs. Now, we only have 3 bigs. It really sucks to lose Baynes but are we necessarily losing size if we weren't using some of it anyway? I am just saying size wont necessarily be the problem in and of itself.

Germany will be a bit of a litmus test for this team. If the Boomers are able to take care of business against Germany without there being a huge, noticeable weakness inside, then I think we can move forward with hope and optimism. If not, then we will either have a bit of time to figure out a revised strategy, or we will be in a bit of trouble come crossovers.

Hugely dissapointing for Aaron who's been a tremendous servant for the Boomers. All the best to him for a full and speedy recovery.

I think in an odd way this may actually help the Boomers - hand has been forced, have to go small. Start Kay who's been excellent, play Thybulle at the 4 (can defend bigs and may well trouble them more with his quickness and mobility), spot minutes for Reath resting Jock, rebound as a team, galvanise the team behind 'let's do it for Azza'.

It might just be the X factor, the different, the edge, we need to get us across the line.

The basketball gods work in strange and complicated ways people. Nostraballmus says thank you to the Gods and asks that they look after Azza too.

Sucks for Boomers and Baynes.
Landale will have to play l8ke the superstar he thinks he is.

*like

Nostraballmus has become far more positive now the Olympics have come than he was before it, even in the face of this adversity.

I think if we look at how the Boomers have played, they've played their best basketball with Baynes on the bench it's sad to say. Baynes was struggling with form. He did have a break out game against Italy but outside of that, Reath can give us what Baynes was giving us til that point and hopefully more.

It's not just a question of inside though. This team will benefit a lot of Delly finds some form, Exum starts playing with some more poise, and if we can get literally anything out of the spot minutes Goulding is bringing.

If we look at the trend internationally it's not necessarily a deficit to go small. Italy is small internationally yet beat Serbia to get through. Argentina was small when they shocked the world and got silver at the world cup.

Looking ahead, it seems like size shouldn't really be that big an issue until (and if) we make the semi finals.

Slovenia is smaller than us across the board. Argentina is comparable and smaller in some positions. They stand as our most likely opponents.

In the semis Spain has four guys above 6'9, including the Gasols - a bit of an issue. France has 4 guys who could call themselves 7 footers without anyone debating too hard - an issue.

But for our crossovers we're most likely looking at comparably sized nations.

For our match ahead with Germany, it will be a great test and very important if we're going to keep the number one seed. There is a way we can drop this game and remain number one but it takes some other teams helping us out.

Australia is +20 on points for
Italy is + 7
Germany is -3

If Germany beat Australia, and Italy beat Nigeria, we go into a three-way tie. Australia will remain the number 1 seed if the points between Germany and Italy dont cancel out Australia's 13 point lead on Italy or 23 point lead on Germany.

If Australia loses to Germany and Nigeria beat Italy, Australia will find themselves in second place on head-to-head.

Basically every game from hereon is a must-win but there is some small room for movement if we find ourselves a bit unlucky tomorrow.

Yeah. We need to beat Germany. No three way ties. What's my safe word ? The 7 point nightmare.... Moscow 1980 …

In the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, the Boomers played their best Olympic tournament to that date, equalling their 1976 finish of eighth place. The Boomers defeated eventual silver medallist Italy, 84-77, in the preliminary round, but due to a three-way tie with Italy and Cuba, the team failed to advance to the final round, despite 5 wins and 2 losses.

I've been optimistically wondering if Goorj has been keeping up his sleeve the use of Kay at the 5 in a high post role ala Bogut. He's no Bogut, for sure, but he's a handy option there and we might be able to get some cheapies from the established 2019 playbook.

Mills will need to continue being creative without Baynes proving an array of screens for him. Hopefully Reath can be just as helpful when Kay and Landale are resting

All the best to Aaron fora speedy recovery. Neck injuries cam at times cause residual problems, so let's hope it's nothing too serious.

Regarding going small, it can work if our outside shot is dropping - in which case, it could also help open the interior for Thybule/Exum penetration.
If the outside shots aren't falling, then we'd need to box out with intent and crash the glass like we haven't seen yet, otherwise it could get ugly.
Agree re Kay at the high post, let's hope that Reath has been running those plays at practice today too. I'm hoping him and Ingles can get some good pick n roll/pop action going,

With one less sub in the front court, I can see our bigs getting very tired which might warrant us playing slow which kind of contradicts the up tempo style that Goorj was initially planning, but shouldn't be a problem as long as our half court offence isn't too stagnant.

We should expect to see Green get some minutes, in which he might do some special things - his performance in the Nigeria practice game was super impressive.

Our biggest issue with Barnes and especially Bogut not playing is their talk on defence and how they truly anchored our team and I don't see Reath or Landale having the experience or even confidence to do that but maybe Kay or Ingles could provide a bit of that but definitely a massive loss regardless of how well anyone thought Azza was playing